OPEN DATA

Excel Data Add-In and Google Add-On

Within Microsoft Excel, by "adding" a tab — EIA & FRED — it will allow you to download, directly into your spreadsheet, energy data from EIA’s data API and economic data from the St. Louis Federal Reserve’s Economic Data (FRED) API. These spreadsheets, with whatever fetched API data series you saved, can be opened later, or refreshed with newly updated API data by simply clicking the Get Data button. This ability to save your favorite data and analysis and rerun it later with the latest data is an immense saving of time and effort for analysts performing periodic analyses of statistics and indicators.

Google Sheets, a free spreadsheet alternative to Excel that you can access from anywhere, works similarly.

Spreadsheet Adds

Within the spreadsheet, you can browse each data repository by category or search by keywords to find data IDs and to download the series information and data. Once the desired data series are downloaded, all of Excel’s rich functionality is available to create analyses and graph results.

Throughout the EIA website, the symbol is used to denote a link to a page with the series ID or source key and sample API calls. The series ID can be copied and pasted directly into Excel and the series data fetched with the EIA add-in. This is another way to load data series found on www.eia.gov into your workbook.

Currently, EIA's data API contains 1.6 million energy series. The St. Louis Federal Reserve's API contains 240,000 economic series. Both organizations offer the data APIs, bulk data downloads, and Excel add-ins free of charge as part of their commitment to open data.

EIA is grateful to the St. Louis Federal Reserve for generously sharing source code and advice.

User Guide for Excel Add-In

The add-in contains four groups of buttons:

Download Tools: Get Data is the only means of fetching and updating data series, and update both EIA and FRED series throughout the entire workbook

EIA Data: Browse or search for EIA series IDs. Requires a subsequent "Get Data" operation to download the full series and observations.

FRED Data: Browse or search for FRED series IDs. Requires a subsequent "Get Data" operation to download the full series and observations. Note that data manipulations currently are only available for FRED data series.

Data tools: Tools to change the frequency of series, if possible (requires a subsequent "Get Data" operation), and a quick graphing tool.

Support: link to instructions and to EIA and to FRED

Downloading EIA or FRED data into Excel is very simple: The key is understanding where (which rows) in the
Excel worksheet to input a series ID. The only information
necessary to Get Data is the series ID in the row 1.

Clicking the "Get Data" button fetches the series title, units, frequency, and the data points in reverse chronological order. Reverse chronological order has several advantages:

the most recent data will always be aligned at the top, allowing easy comparison of most recent data for series with differnet starting dates

Installation Instructions for Excel Add-In

Temporary installation

Opening the add-in file (eia.xlam) will activate the macro for as long as the Excel workbook is open on your computer. In this mode, you will need to open eia.xlam again after rebooting or closing all workbooks to use the EIA & Fred Data add-in.

Permanent installation

To have the add-in permanently available whenever you open Excel, please follow the instructions below:

Chart functions adjusted to display both vertical and horizontal data.

Chart functions adjusted to display data in both ascending and descending orders.

Version 3

Series ID search fixed allowing for more accurate results.

Browse Data and Data Search display refined for better usability. Differentiating selected series on open forms allowing for users to see what they have selected.

Added "+" signs to Browse data form display to allow for a windows explorer feel to navigation.

Add-In update prompt added to alert user when a new version is available.

Hard coded data sources have been removed and are now dynamically populated from EIA API data.

Added Alt-F command to open the filter drop-down.

Version 2

Internal beta release

Version 1

Internal alpha release.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Do I need an Internet connection to use the EIA/FRED Add-in?
A: Yes, while some functionality exists without an internet connection you will need to be connected to the Internet to utilize the full capabilities of the Add-in.

Q: Is this the download for the FRED Excel Add-in?
A: No, this is the download for the EIA/FRED Excel Add-in which allows you to access and run analyses with both FRED and EIA data.

Q: Do you have an option for data to come in a row rather than a column?
A: We do. This was a requested feature we added in Version 4.

Q: If I update the data will it destroy any computations I've made in the workbook?
A: Download the new data via the add-in tool, sort on the dates and save- then set the links to refer to the unchanged cells in the newly sorted sheet.

Q: Why is there an annoying security dialog every time I open the EIA/FRED Excel Add-in?
A: To get rid of the security dialog you need to add the EIA/FRED Excel add-in to the list of trusted Add-ins. To do this, click the "File" tab in the top left corner of the Excel window and select "options". In the new window click "Add-ins" and then the "Go..." button. Browse the list of available Add-ins and make sure the box next to the one labeled EIA is checked. Close Excel. When you next open Excel the security dialog will no longer be present.